Works
Aṣ-Ṣafadī wrote about Ibn Nubātah as a poet:
He is “unique in the elegance of his poetry, the sweetness of his expression, the excellence of his poetic compositions, the astonishing quality of his themes, the clarity of his language and the fluency of what he writes.”
(Ḫalīl b. Aybak aṣ-Ṣafadī, Al-Wāfī bi-l-wafayāt, ed. Helmut Ritter et al. Wiesbaden, Beirut 1962ff, vol. 1, pp. 311-12)
About Ibn Nubātah as a prose writer he wrote:
“His prose, however, represents the height of eloquence. In it he followed [al-Qāḍī] al-Fāḍil and adopted his style, he extinguished the light of Ibn ʿAbd aẓ-Ẓāhir and left him no privileged place in people's hearts.”
(Ḫalīl b. Aybak aṣ-Ṣafadī, Al-Wāfī bi-l-wafayāt, ed. Helmut Ritter et al. Wiesbaden, Beirut 1962ff, vol. 1, p. 312)
Although Ibn Nubātah is better known for his poetry than for his prose and, along with Ṣafī ad-Dīn al-Ḥillī (677-749/1278-1349), was the most famous poet of his time, he is also one of the most important Arabic authors of artistic prose texts of the pre-modern era. Ibn Nubātah did not consider his compositions as carved in stone, but rather viewed them as works in progress. His Dīwān alone exists in four versions, to which he made various additions. Here, ALEA makes previously ignored prose works alongside poetry freely available in a critical edition. Many of Ibn Nubātah's works are published here for the first time, others are revised from previous editions.
The first phase of his work can be described as the Syrian period (716-42/1316-41), during which he stayed in Damascus, Hama and Aleppo. During the second Syrian period (743-61/1342-60) he worked in the chancery in Damascus (dīwān al-inšāʾ). Forty-four years after leaving his hometown, Ibn Nubātah returned to Cairo and spent his final years there (761-68/1360-66).
Since the dating of many of his works is not (yet) known, the following classification was made based on genre. Despite extensive research, the overview cannot claim to be conclusive.
Additional information can be found in: Thomas Bauer, “Ibn Nubātah al-Miṣrī (686-768/1287-1366): Life and Works. Part 1: The Life of Ibn Nubātah”.